When it comes to Beethoven's symphonies, how fast is too fast? Speed is turning out to be the defining feature of Riccardo Chailly's ongoing Beethoven cycle; it's what we expect from period-instrument conductors, but not from those helming such historied symphony orchestras as Chailly's Gewandhaus.
In this pairing of the Eighth and the Third Symphonies, there were passages that were slightly scrambled. When even the Gewandhaus players can't keep up, you could argue that it is time to slow down. Yet overall, the sense of invigoration made it worthwhile. It was the lighter Eighth that really benefited. The opening movement already had the feel of an exuberant finale. Here and throughout, the melodies swung by on their own, song-like momentum, and when the last movement careered towards its close in a blur of forceful timpani, the effect was electrifying.
The Third Symphony, too, was highly charged, although here the slow movement was spacious enough to allow the orchestra's sonorous woodwinds to shine. Yet this symphony's grander scale demands something more than exhilaration, and ultimately the performance's thrilling qualities couldn't quite eclipse the suspicion of depths left unplumbed.
The programme-opener was Colin Matthews's new Grand Barcarolle, a piece that toys with the fact that Beethoven left the Eighth Symphony without a slow movement, but nods equally towards Mahler in its sombre melodiousness. A barcarolle is a gondolier's song, and we soon heard the water, first rippling in the overlapping woodwind, then becoming choppier, more glinting. The writing is richly melodic – slow, song-like and serenely beautiful. At the end, as the strings throb upwards leaving a buzzing low key-note, the effect is cathartic, more so than one expects from a 14-minute piece. Here, like Beethoven in his slow movements, Matthews aims for the heart, and hits its target just as surely.
